VANCOUVER– Beginning Saturday (Sept. 15), sport fishers will again be allowed to keep chinook salmon caught in the Buoy 10 area near the mouth of the Columbia River, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) announced today.

For the rest of September, the daily limit in the Buoy 10 sport fishery will be four adult salmon, of which one may be a chinook. Oct. 1 through December, the daily limit will be six salmon, of which four may be adults and one may be a chinook

The Buoy 10 area was closed to chinook retention Aug. 30 because the number of chinook originally reserved for recreational harvest had been taken by that time. Those harvest levels were set to limit the mixed-stock fishery's impact on upriver brights, a stock that includes Snake River wild fish listed for federal protection. However, the upriver bright run has returned in unexpectedly strong numbers– some 50,000 fish more than originally forecast.

"With the increased upriver bright run size, the overall impact rate from the chinook fishery goes down, and that allows us to re-open Buoy 10 for chinook," said Cindy LeFleur, WDFW's Columbia River harvest manager.

The Buoy 10 area extends from the Tongue Point-Rocky Point line to the mouth of the Columbia River.